Tell the Obama Administration to End Prison Rapes

Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.

What’s another 60,500 or so brutal sexual assaults in the larger scheme of things?

I’m pretty sure that’s not U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s point of view. However, if he decides to put off implementing proposed national standards to decrease sexual abuse behind bars for another year he will be in effect saying just that.

Each year, more than 60,500 sexual assaults occur in our state and federal prison. Roughly 4.5% of the more than 2 million men, women and children behind bars are victims of rape and sexual assault. Our nation’s correctional facilities are failing miserably at protecting the prison population confined within their walls, particularly when you consider that more inmates report sexual abuse at the hands of prison staff than from fellow inmates, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Last year (60,500 sexual assaults ago),  the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission created by Congress back in 2003 ( 423,500 sexual assaults ago) issued a series of proposed national standards to reduce the frequency of sexual assaults involving prisoners. Holder has until June 23 to review those recommendations and make modifications before making the commission’s standards nationally binding. But at this point, due to pushback mainly from corrections officials, it doesn’t appear Holder will meet that deadline, and he'll in all likelihood seek an extension to June 2011 (60,500 sexual assaults from now).

The NPREC standards -- formulated following  years of  research, including input from corrections officials, experts and prison rape survivors -- are getting held up over concerns about costs. Correction officials, citing budgetary constraints, are pressuring Holder and the Justice Department to weaken the standards: in essence, to implement something less than the zero-tolerance policy for prison rape recommended by the commission.

However, the corrections departments in Oregon and other states that have already implemented many of the commission’s standards have done so with little or no increased spending.

Clearly, rape and sexual assault doesn’t have to an inevitable consequence of doing time behind bars.

Admittedly, working up sympathy for the plight of prisoners can be difficult. But not all inmates are violent criminals. Many are jailed for nonviolent crimes. Many made one stupid decision, a poor choice. Many were in the wrong place and the wrong time. And some prisoners are actually innocent.

Certainly, no man, woman or child behind bars should be abused, debased and terrorized as part of his or her punishment.

Last week, Holder and the Department of Justice began seeking public comment on the  standards. I urge you to add your voice to the voices of those courageous victims of prison rape who have already gone before Congress to tell their stories. People like 24-year old Troy Erik Isaac, who was sentenced at age 12 to a juvenile detention center, where he was raped repeatedly by older boys. People like Kendell Spruce, who contracted HIV after being repeatedly raped in an Arkansas prison. And people like Erica Hejnar, who was forced to perform sex acts for corrections officers at a Pennsylvania jail.

If you can’t write Attorney General Holder on behalf of  Troy, or Kendell, or Erica, then do it for yourself, because the impact of prison rape -- the disease, desire for revenge, the psychological damage -- does not stay behind bars. It returns to haunt our communities when prisoners are eventually released back to the streets.

Tell the Justice Department and Attorney General Holder to codify the NPREC standards and stop prison rape now.

Photo credit: DW212